But now, pricey designer sneakers are looking less Kendall Roy and more, well, JFK Jr.—and they’re suddenly hotter than ever before. “Torpedo sneakers,” as GQ dubbed them in January, are the purring antithesis of the Triple S. With a spiritual assist from the influential Bode x Nike Astro Grabber that debuted last year, we’ve seen a wave of lithe, sporty kicks made of slim suede and low-profile nylon, whose low-profile silhouettes evoke the look of mid-century track and field shoes.
A few popular examples include Prada’s Collapse sneaker, whose minimal nylon construction recalls a soft ballet shoe, and Dries Van Noten’s retro suede trainers, which come in funky colorways. This spring, Maison Margiela debuted the Sprinter, which features a minimal cleat sole. (In an email to GQ, a Margiela representative denied that the Sprinter is a direct riff on Nike’s Moon Shoe, which the brand designed for track athletes to wear during the 1972 Olympic trials, though it has garnered many such comparisons.) All three sneakers are offered in on-trend hues such as mustard yellow and martini-olive green.
Earlier this summer, the actor Jacob Elordi wore his beigeish-yellow-and-blue Sprinters all over Rome while filming Ridley Scott’s upcoming thriller, The Dog Stars, and then slipped on a pair of kiwi-colored Dries kicks when he returned to New York in July. The 1975’s Matty Healy has the same Sprinters as Elordi, and the frontman wore his pair to an LA screening of the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot (which features his fiancée, the model Gabriette) in July. And naturally, Harry Styles owns all three; the globetrotting pop star wore the Dries sneakers in white, Margiela Sprinters in taupe, and Prada Collapses in yellow in the last four months alone.
(And let’s not forget Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, who wore a pair of fresh-out-of-the-box Sprinters in dark olive green to Margiela’s runway show in July.)